Books

Down Wrote a Daughter

Robert Murray

Up Came a Squatter: Niel Black of Glenormiston, 1839–1880 by Maggie Black NewSouth and State Library of Victoria, 2016, 320 pages, $49.99 ____________________________________________ Without Banjo Paterson’s “Waltzing Matilda” the good old word squatter, in its pastoral sense, might have disappeared from general usage. These productive old pioneers of the bush have had a bad press over the years: ruthlessly greedy land-grabbers; rural snobs; mass murderers of Aborigines; despoilers of a pristine environment; drivers of poor old swaggies to suicide over stolen sheep. Maggie Black’s biography of her great-grandfather helps provide balance. Niel Black arrived from Scotland in 1839 at thirty-five…